


Oh Captain My Captain

by maliwanhellfire



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: AU, Animals, Necromancy, cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 04:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5898073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maliwanhellfire/pseuds/maliwanhellfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bull and Krem get a pet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh Captain My Captain

Bull read a lot of parenting guides. They were varied, and often contradictory, but he consumed them anyway. He figured if he read enough, he'd get a rough idea of what advice was good and what was bad. A couple of them had suggested pets. Apparently they encouraged many positive qualities and outcomes in children. 

"How about that one," Bull said, pointing at the glass. 

"That's a bearded dragon," Krem said. 

"Yeah! Look how cool he is!"

"Stitches said they give you Salmonella."

Bull was always a little impressed with how he'd managed to become the father of a kid who was simultaneously a sass-master  _and_ a complete square. 

"They've got snakes..." Bull said, scratching between his horns and squinting in close at a particularly pretty, little python. 

When he looked back down he saw Krem's eyes dart away from the aisles, back towards the reptile cases. The pet store didn't have much, truth be told. Just some fish, the reptiles, and...

"Can we go?" Krem asked, as Bull peered around him. 

Huh, hamsters. The pet store had hamsters. Cute, fat little bastards that probably didn't eat much, or live far beyond 3.5 seconds. Bull wasn't sure that was a good idea. He wanted Krem to have something sturdy, and relatively permanent. Something that wasn't capable of forming a plague, given time and a grain silo. 

"May I help you, Sir?" someone asked, from behind him. 

Bull turned, and found himself looking down at a teenage girl with a great big smile, and wavy horns that pointed backwards. She looked like the sort of kid that was enthusiastic about 98% of the time, and woefully overcome for the other two. Her nametag said 'Adaar'.

"I'm gonna go look at the fish," Krem said, already walking off.

"Don't fall in," Bull replied. 

He looked back at the girl. She was still smiling with enthusiasm, where most would've turned the heat down or let it become awkward.

"So, how long do these little fu-" Bull remembered himself. "-unny guys live?"

"Well, naturally about a year or two," she said. 

"Nnn," Bull said.

"Or you could... keep them running," she added.

She was still smiling brightly, even innocently. 

"Keep them running how?" Bull asked. 

"You know..."

Bull did not know.

"Give them a little zap ever six months," she said. 

"Electrocute the hamster?" Bull asked.

"Sir, we're not in Qunandar..."

It took Bull a minute, and in that time Adaar did not even begin to falter. She had the level stare of a Qunari re-educator, just at a lower altitude. A light went on.

"Oh shit, you mean necromancy," Bull replied.

"Or you could just replace it with another one whenever it dies," she said. "They only cost like, ten bucks."

 

\---

 

Bull hid behind the squeaky toys, while Krem snuck his way back to the hamster cages. Obviously thinking himself un-monitored, Krem pressed himself up against the plexiglass, looking somewhat melancholic as he watched rodents alternate between darting about and rolling up into fluffy balls. 

"Do you want to hold one?" Adaar asked, having loitered nearby like a benign shark. 

"Am I allowed to?" Krem asked.

"Sure, just be gentle," Adaar replied. "Is there one you like best?"

Krem didn't even hesitate.

"That one," he said, pointing into a cage.

Adaar unlocked the case, and picked out Krem's rodent of choice. When she put it into his hand, his face bloomed with a pure happiness that Bull rarely ever saw on him. It was then that Bull reconciled himself with that fact that he was about to become the owner of something he once would have considered vermin. 

"Thank you," Krem said, giving the hamster back. "Did you see where Bull went?"

"I think he went over to the counter," Adaar replied.

Adaar kept hold of the hamster, and gave Bull an incredibly unsubtle wink as soon as Krem was out of sight.

 

\---

 

"Got a surprise for you," Bull said the next day, after school.

"What?" Krem asked, warily.

Krem had come to learn that surprises could be cake, which he loved, or piano tuition, which he did not. He was now wary of surprises.

"For you," Bull said, taking a small box out from behind his back. "Careful opening it, if it does a runner I don't think we're getting it back."

Krem lifted the tabs on the box carefully, peeking inside with a wary expression on his face. His face went abruptly slack. 

"You bought Captain!" Krem said. "You bought her!"

"Yep," Bull said.

"For me?" Krem asked.

"Yep," Bull said.

Krem's young face went red and watery. 

"Aw, kid, don't cry," Bull said. "I was hoping you'd be happy."

"I am so happy," Krem replied, tears dripping down his cheeks.

 

\---

 

"So, Captain, huh?" Bull said, after Krem stopped thanking him, and they managed to get to the car.

"Yeah, she was the best one," Krem replied. "She was Captain hamster."

"How'd you figure that?" Bull asked.

"She was the fattest," Krem said, as if this quality were self-evident.

"Fair," Bull replied. 

 

\---

 

"You want me to what?" the necromancer asked, six months down the line.

"I need you to revive this hamster," Bull said. "My family life depends on it."

The mage sighed and looked up at the ceiling, his body the very picture of defeat.

"I can't believe I went to school for this..." the mage replied. 

"Neither can I," Bull said. 

**Author's Note:**

> I like those videos where kids are so happy to have a pet that they cry. Would that we all were so overcome by good fortune in our lives.


End file.
